Elitists Roll Out “Stop Rebelling And Support Biden, You Insolent Little Shits” Campaign

The US presidential election is more than 15 months away, and already we’re seeing elitist establishment narrative managers rolling out their long-anticipated “Stop Rebelling and Support Biden, You Insolent Little Shits” campaign. HBO’s Bill Maher spent his “New Rule” monologue segment last night admonishing his audience to abandon any notion of progressive reform and embrace the former vice president instead.

“All the Democrats have to do to win is to come off less crazy than Trump, and of course they’re blowing it, coming across as unserious people who are going to take your money so that migrants from Honduras can go to college for free and get a major in America Sucks,” Maher said. “Now do I want Biden to be president? Not really, but Biden’s the only Democrat who beats Trump in Ohio. He’s like non-dairy creamer: nobody loves it, but in a jam it gets the job done.”

“I’m sick of hearing that Democrats need to excite the base; Trump excites the base,” Maher said. “It’s the fatigue, stupid. Let’s make it hard for Donald Trump to play on voters’ fears and let the fatigue win the election for us. We’ll get to the revolution, but remember: put on your oxygen mask before assisting your child.”

Boy, Bill. If that’s not the kind of inspiring rallying cry that can galvanize people against the president, I don’t know what is.

Weirdly, Maher inadvertently explains why his brilliant Biden strategy is doomed to failure earlier on in this exact same segment. Maher praises the Trump economy, saying “It’s hard to beat an incumbent in a good economy; every incumbent since FDR has won if they avoided a recession leading up to the election year.”

“The voters that Democrats need to win, moderates who have Trump fatigue, will vote against a good economy, I think, just to get back to normalcy,” Maher said. “But they won’t trade it away for left-wing extremism. You say you want a revolution, well, you know, you gotta get elected first.”

Maher has all the facts right there in front of him, but because he is a propagandist who is only famous because he knows how to spout pro-establishment lines in an authoritative tone of voice, he manages to interpret them in the dumbest way possible. Yes, on paper the US economy is doing well, but only by the standards used by neoliberal politicians and mass media outlets to determine economic success. In real terms a population that used to be able to support a family on a single income now mostly requires two incomes, and most of them would struggle to pay even a thousand-dollar emergency expense.

Americans have gotten much poorer in terms of real income and income inequality has been exploding, but because both parties have been normalizing this paradigm and deceitfully using stock markets and unemployment rates to measure economic success, Trump is able to say he’s performing amazingly well economically. In terms of real American spending power he’s actually performing abysmally, but Democrats are resistant to saying so because it will mean conceding that the Obama/Biden administration did, too.

The path to beating Trump, then, is obviously not to hope that Americans will “vote against a good economy” for the first time in living memory as Bill Maher suggests, but to address the elephant in the room of growing income and wealth inequality and how more and more Americans have to work multiple jobs just to make ends meet. If you can offer Americans more in terms of real economic justice instead of crap about the stock exchange that puts bread on nobody’s table, voters will listen. There are some candidates who are campaigning on exactly this platform, and none of them are named Joe Biden.

Biden’s platform, in contrast, seems more and more to consist of him just telling progressives to shut up and stop whining. Asked on a recent AFSCME forum about his controversial comments in January of last year that he has “no empathy” for young Americans who fear crippling college debt and rising cost of living, The Huffington Post reports that Biden not only stood by his comments, but doubled down on them, saying that if things are bad then the younger generation is to blame for not engaging in the political process.

Biden, like Bill Maher, is inadvertently giving progressives all the information they need. Yes, they should change it. And the very first thing they should change is a political dynamic which elevates warmongering Wall Street cronies like Joe Biden. There’s absolutely no reason for anyone to accept a status quo that insists the only way to beat Trump is to take a Hail Mary gamble on trying to elect a Democrat who’s no better than Trump. They tried that in 2016 and there’s no reason to believe they’ll be able to bully everyone into playing along in 2020.

The former vice president is about one click away from coming right out and saying “Vote for me, because fuck you that’s why.” And elitist establishment narrative managers are already essentially saying it for him.

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George Carver/August 6, 2019

Serious question from a truth-seeker: what happened to MarcyWheeler/emptywheel.net? Years ago, I hung on her every word. bmaz, rayne, & Quinn Norton (Aaron Swartz’s black widow) were always horrible, but I skipped them. Now she has ratfucked to the FBI, dedicated herself to muhRUSSIA!!!, and won’t be happy until Assange is in Gitmo (honor-bound to defend “freedom”). Any insightful replies would be most appreciated.

Bill Maher can spew false rhetoric with the best of them, but it’s still false rhetoric. Joe Biden can make a dufus puppet president as well as Trump and Bush and Obama, but he’d still be a puppet dancing to the ruling sociopaths ‘ music. The American people can be fooled just as easily as any other trusting people, but they are still being easily herded like dumb sheep. So yeah, things aren’t going to change if we keep doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.

Guido Colacci/August 5, 2019

1. Michelle Obama is the deus ex machina, I think, not pinata-Joe Biden, who is sort of making some of the street-cred politicians look like street-bullies for relishing kicking and cutting him when he is down, which he should be, but mainly for stuff they can’t talk about. I’m guessing that this elaborate process of sequential culls of 20 debate candidates is not really what the rigid democratic party establishment has in mind, but a ruse to wear everybody out, and test memes for traction and palatability. Here is an interesting take on why the democratic candidates have to take extreme liberal positions and fight each other at an edge of debate which will not get many votes (“center-left” means center-right in the US). Needing 130,000 $1 donations, that cost $5 each to get, paints the candidates into a corner of trying to motivate that demographic of society. That demographic is the demographic “the squad” is reaching. Those who don’t get some decent polling and all those little contributions go nowhere, not to the September debate. What they need to jump the hurdles works against them in the general election. This author thinks it was just a big mistake, an unforeseen consequence. Maybe… https://www.aier.org/article/hidden-reason-primary-debates-seem-extra-crazy-year

In a ruling published late Tuesday, Judge John Koeltl of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York delivered a devastating blow to the US-led conspiracy against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

In his ruling, Judge Koeltl, a Bill Clinton nominee and former assistant special prosecutor for the Watergate Special Prosecution Force, dismissed “with prejudice” a civil lawsuit filed in April 2018 by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) alleging WikiLeaks was civilly liable for conspiring with the Russian government to steal DNC emails and data and leak them to the public.

glider/August 4, 2019

maxim/August 4, 2019

Take a look around. See all the wars and destroyed countries and violence and murder? Depleted uranium, mutated children, white phosphorous, napalm, cluster bombs. Millions of live destroyed, millions living in poverty and despair. Millions fleeing from war torn countries. That’s the result of voting Dem and Rep, over and over and over. That is the result of both parties. They lie and they murder. And if you vote for them, then you are to blame. You are an accessory to mass murder. And if I’m not mistaken, that’s a mortal sin. I wonder what hell is going to look like?

Ishkabibble/August 4, 2019

Agreed, the entire system is thoroughly compromised and corrupted. Germany was like this in the early 1930s, which is why Germans agreed to scrap all the useless democracy and put one good man in charge. It worked, and the nation thrived until the ruling sociopaths of the world organized a global war to eliminate this upstart nation with their incorruptible dictator.

Fortunately, many prophecies are telling us the return of Jesus is very near. It could be any day now and I pray the Rosary to hasten His Glorious return because I have seen more than enough of all the bullshit.

Michel – you are truly one of the only ‘believers’ I’ve seen that also seems to be a true leftist. I feel compelled to let you know how I feel when I see posts regarding God, or Jesus, or religion in general. First, I can’t really speak for all Atheists, however, I’m confident that many of them might feel the same way I do when I say that being an Atheist is hard. We must go through life with the knowledge that we only have but one life – the one we have, right now, on this planet. I will set aside the various reasons why Atheists are Atheists, but for the vast majority, it is because we literally can’t have faith in something that doesn’t pass the ‘scientific method’ test.

I really appreciate your perspective on the issues, and I’d appreciate your comments even more if I wasn’t forced to read about the ‘pending arrival’ of what I consider to be a fable. It is hard enough to know that our one life on this planet is being ruined by sociopaths and oligarchs, it is made even harder when I see people with intellect using their energies in ways that I don’t think will help.

I appreciate that faith helps many people ‘cope’ with the Hell that can be life, which is why I’d never want to be a part of ruining that for anyone. That being said, I’d much rather be involved in conversations about hard and fast possible solutions to our failing Capitalist system that does not rely on ‘hoping’.

Michel Bélisle/August 4, 2019

@PCPrincess,

I am neither left or right.

I am, as you say, a believer in the Gospel of Jesus:

“Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22: 37-40)

So we have to desire the same treatment for other people as for ourselves.

I was baptized as a Christian, and it was a true spiritual experience, considered hard for years. It was real for me. I was 12, but I “knew”. What I could never accept was the injustice of eternal hell for those who never had a chance to hear the teachings of Jesus. That was not what Jesus taught, not at all. He was crucified for teaching debt-jubilee, which the pharisees had eliminated 200 years prior, since debts were due to them. “Christianity” mocks the teachings of Jesus, who was like Buddha, a realized human-spirit. Crucifixion was not for weird rabbis. It was ONLY for threats to the established order. Jesus was that, because he taught debt repudiation (“Gospel”, “good news”). Greece was having a civil war over that at the time. Egypt had one a couple centuries prior. Debts is the slavery. Michael Hudson, Mideast Financial Historian, has the story here. https://michael-hudson.com/2017/12/he-died-for-our-debt-not-our-sins/

historicus/August 8, 2019

Jesus’ unique cult-belief was that he was the incarnation of the mythic perfect Paschal lamb. Jesus contrived to violate a Roman law which carried the death penalty so he could offer his own body as blood sacrifice, not on a Jewish altar as in days of old, but on a Roman cross. A folk-memory of this act survives in the garbled narrative of his symbolic attack on the money changers at the temple, which was a heavily guarded facility that doubled as the national treasury, the very heart of state power. Jesus imagined this gesture would be so pleasing to Yahweh that it would move the deity to return in power the very day of his execution, just as he intervened at the last moment to stay the hand of Abraham when about to sacrifice his son Isaac. But Yahweh failed to take notice and Jesus perished in ignominy. Jesus’ agonized final words, “father, why have you abandoned me?” are as moving a testament as you will find anywhere in literature to the tragedy that is religious fanaticism.

Lloyd/August 21, 2019

“Ignominy”? Really? It is not widely taught nor recognized that those outwardly disparaging last words recorded for the account of his death is actually Jesus quoting OT scripture in continuing accordance with fulfilling the prophecy regarding same. If actually designed to convey hopelessness and abandonment, what sense can be made for such a negative public account being made by Christian authors of a presumably fictional story when there are endless better options to use here? By the same token, however, the Bible is basically a long term accounting of the hopelessly total failure of human beings with regards to the God described within those pages. How that manages to remain a best seller for over two thousand years is a true miracle.

Leif Knutsen/August 6, 2019

“You cannot avoid the interplay of politics within an orthodox religion. This power struggle permeates the training, educating and disciplining of the orthodox community. Because of this pressure, the leaders of such community inevitably must face that ultimate internal question: to succumb to complete opportunism as a price of maintaining their rule, or risk sacrificing themselves for the sake of the orthodox ethic.”

from “Muad’Dib: The Religious Issues” by the Princess Irulan

Dune, series: Frank Herbert.

IMO all organized religions have always been about control of the populations and not the enlightenment of the masses.

“War becomes perpetual when used as a rationale for peace,” Norman Solomon.

“Peace becomes perpetual when used as a rationale for survival.” Yours truly.

Jesus was an egalitarian and was killed for his egalitarian views and his image usurped for the power-hungry.

Teddy/August 4, 2019

Teddy/August 4, 2019

One minor point. Don’t think of it as Bill Mahrer as sending this message. Mahrer is the hand-puppet of AT&T/Time-Warner. One of the small handful of corporations that try to control everything anyone sees, ever since Reagan and Clinton combined to eliminate the rules a democracy needed to limit media concentration of ownership. So, it is AT&T that is sending out the message to support the man who was once known as the Senator from Mastercard. It is also AT&T that is praising the Trump economy and especially the giant tax break for billionaires and corporations that sent American government even deeper into debt to AT&T’s corporate partners on Wall Street. I wonder how many billions AT&T made from that? I saw a headline that Trump personally made a million dollars by pressuring the Fed into the rate cut. I wonder how much AT&T made that day? I love the column, but if we want to change the world we must see it for what it really is and not confuse the hand-puppet with the puppeteer.

Lloyd/August 5, 2019

“A Century of US Presidents Marching to the Beat of the New World Order” by West Point grad, Joachim Hagopian on the actual CFR puppet show. “Rice*A*Romney….that must have Zombie Treat” a satire of that same history at > FauxScienceSlayer(.)com > written as the Bain Bandit stole the 2012 RINO primary. End feudalism now.

cutthecord/August 4, 2019

mike k/August 4, 2019

We are being served up the same old “hold your nose, and vote for the lesser evil politician”. Just think of how many Americans fall for that stupid meme every election season. Basically we are told we have only two choices, both bad. Democrat or republican?? How about a walk outside of those suffocating non-choices……

cutthecord/August 4, 2019

Khatika/August 4, 2019

Is anyone Even paying attention. No one is watching the debates and regardless of all the jockeying going on right now it will boil down to the first few primaries before anyone takes a closer look. So sit back and enjoy the show. We are only at the coming attractions. The actual show has yet to begin.

Grouchy Marx/August 4, 2019

These MSM shits got it so hopelessly wrong in 2016 that they’ve forfeited any right they think they have to lecture voters on politics. They have zero insight, all they are good for is to function as reverse weather vanes.

The only decent thing Bill Maher ever did in his life was “Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death”, and that was 30 years ago.

Ms Johnstone , thank you for this article. I do not watch TV at all anymore because it is so full of trash. Our ” owners and masters ” are very aware of just how ” dumb ” the voting public is and they just ” phone it in ” because the masses are extremely simple, gullible, and stupid. They have ” the system rigged their way” and there is only one way to get rid of that system and unfortunately that will never happen.

cutthecord/August 4, 2019

Ishkabibble/August 4, 2019

Why does anyone care what human being Bill Maher has to say about absolutely anything — because he makes a lot of money and is on TV? The one and only thing he’s an expert at is saying exactly what his employers want him to say. The same is true for MadCow, Matthews, etc. .. BTW, if you want to know the REAL rate of inflation, unemployment, GDP, etc. are, go here:http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data

Barr is the swamp. The swamp doesn’t drain itself. The swamp protects itself. The people have nothing to do with any Epstein investigation. Only the swamp will.

Also, no meaningful swamp draining will ever be one political party or the other. Ever since 2016 both Republicans and Democrats have been saying that a huge bombshell revelation is about to hit any minute now that’s going to obliterate the other party. It never happens because reality doesn’t move in alignment with people’s dopey tribal egoic fixations, and because the swamp is bipartisan.

Stop hoping for a magical Hollywood ending where Barr or Mueller or any other imaginary knight in shining armor rides to the rescue. It will not happen. Change will come from us, or it won’t come at all.

Oh, bullshit. Believing that change comes from the people and not from some noble government father figure riding to your rescue is the exact opposite of defeatist. Believing in deus ex machina endings is childish and stupid.

Robyn/August 4, 2019

Antipropo/August 4, 2019

On that Robyn, Australia is “considering” a US request to join a “coalition” that dread word,think Iraq, Yugoslavia,Libya,Syria; to “combat Iranian aggression in the gulf”. Interestingly, reported on RT Iran seized another tanker on Wednesday 31/07. As far as i can tell there is no mention of this in “western” media. As you say, Australia in lock step with the US into every illegal and disastrous (for the victims I just can’t care about “our “casualties “, don’t go). The Australian Defence For e aught to be renamed the Australian OFFENCE Force since we have not been in a defensive war since WW2.

cutthecord/August 4, 2019

Lloyd/August 4, 2019

Hmm, I find myself wondering if the CFS is a good thing, or a bad thing. I guess that depends how I feel about those forming the circle. Can we start a Go Fund Me account for more ammunition? 😉 If this whole thing was an etch-a-sketch drawing I’d be about ready to turn it over and shake it.

PS I like to end my internet surfing here because I typically show a wave consisting of 90 to 150 trackers landing on this beach which I then clean out for the next run. Fun with algorithms?

James-Michael/August 4, 2019

All I have to say is that a single family income was slowly been whittled away by the powers that be going back to the late 1970’s. No administration be it republican or democratic will be able to change this. It’s a construct of this system of things, designed to break down the family unit and thereby fragment and polarize our society. What better way to control and herd the masses than to force them to be preoccupied with making ends meet while the programing of children is in full swing in the public fool system. This will not have a happy ending.

Larry Gates/August 4, 2019

The same arguments were given four years ago as to why we should all rally around Hillary Clinton. And we all saw how that turned out. Biden will lose to Trump, but Bernie Sanders would beat him. It is Bernie not Joe that can win Ohio . . . plus Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. But Democrats are so in love with their corporate funding they would rather lose to Trump than win with a democratic socialist.

Teddy/August 4, 2019

Jimmy Dore had a great line the other day (and BTW, he is a much better comedian than Mahrer has ever dreamed of being). It was when he said “Hey, the Democrats already tried running a centrist against Trump.” How’d that work out?

Huh? Who was that “centrist”? Surely not Hillary Clinton, who was recognised from her State Department days as being on the far right of the Democratic Party. By the standards of the rest of the world, the Democratic Party is ultra far right.

RC -Garrs/August 4, 2019

Wait a minute … I used to know a comedian by the name of Mahar, first name Bill. Pretty funny guy. Yeah, that can’t be the guy you’re talking about, Caitlin. This guy is almost like that other shill, Steve Coldbeers or whoever he used to be. See – there really is ‘some’ upward mobility after all. And they’re prostitutes, at that.

It’s terribly tempting to want to feed the hungry proletariat the meal they desire. But each of those comics you mention have all made me laugh hard. Much of late night comedy now sadly is remarkably interchangeable. Don’t despair https://t.co/MePoHPzcJq

@RobSchneider This is exactly why I reserve a special hatred for comedians like Bill Maher, Steve Colbert, Samantha Bee and Trevor Noah who sell their talent to the churning out of propaganda for establishment power structures. https://t.co/vTVPNe3kU8

Excerpt from "Mainstream 'Centrists' Pose The Greatest Ideological Threat To Us All":

People like Ashton Kutcher imagine that the so-called “center” is called that because it sits smack dab in the middle of the ideological spectrum between communism and fascism, right in that moderate sweet spot that respects capitalism and private ownership without flying off the deep end into Nazi-like tyranny. In reality, the status quo exists entirely outside any left-right paradigm. It’s neither “left” nor “right” to give total control of the western world to an alliance of plutocrats and opaque government agencies who seek to expand their power and wealth by destroying our ecosystem, waging endless wars, and gradually shoring up more and more control of their citizenry via internet censorship, surveillance and police militarization. It’s just crazy.

I’m picking on Ashton not because he occupies some special place in all this, but because he doesn’t. He’s just an illustration of how blind people have become to the real threat that’s right in front of them, and how normalized insanity has become.

People who identify as “left” see the ruling power establishment as right-wing, people who identify as “right” see the ruling power establishment as left-wing, and people who identify as “center” see themselves as moderates whose normal, healthy way of life is under threat by the “far right” and “far left”. But really all that’s happening is a few assholes fucking over everyone else, which is no more “left” or “right” than a terrorist attack. The left versus right argument doesn’t even make sense until this far more pressing issue has been resolved. A Bernie supporter and a Trump supporter are arguing about left versus right while trapped in a room with a tiger who’s eating them both alive.